Explore our curated restaurants, hotels, bars, and wineries in Santa Clara.
Accolades in Santa Clara
La Fontana, Birk's, and JOEY Valley Fair each have a curated wine program. La Fontana also has an extensive wine list, and Birk's holds a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence (2026).
La Fontana serves California-Mediterranean cooking with a curated wine program, an extensive wine list, and craft cocktails. The restaurant also offers stadium views near Levi’s Stadium. It sits in Great America and runs both a la carte and buffet formats.
Birk's is an American steakhouse that grills steaks, chops, and seafood over hardwood, with a curated wine program and craft cocktails on an a la carte menu. The traditional city grill has served continuously since 1989 and holds a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence (2026).
JOEY Valley Fair is a two-story global fusion restaurant in Westfield Valley Fair Shopping Center, with a curated wine program. The menu includes fire-torched sushi and premium steaks, with craft cocktails and beer. Service is a la carte and small plates, and the room has a curated art collection. This is JOEY’s first Bay Area location.
Korean barbecue, soups, and stews are part of the guide. Chungdam grills meat at the table, Jang Su Jang serves Korean barbecue and soups, and Kunjip specializes in bone-broth soups, seolleongtang, and galbijjim.
Chungdam, in Santa Clara Koreatown, grills premium meats at the table, and the cooking is done table-side. The wine program is curated, and the formats are a la carte and small plates, with banchan on the table. It holds Opinionated About Dining recognition for 2024, 2025, and 2026.
Jang Su Jang is a spacious Korean BBQ and soup restaurant with standard wine service and a sake program. Traditional dishes like sizzling bibimbap, fresh bossam, and abundant banchan define the experience. It belongs here as a steady anchor in Santa Clara’s Korean corridor.
Kunjip specializes in Korean bone broth soups and stews, including oxtail seolleongtang and galbijjim, a stone pot of braised short ribs and rice cakes. The wine program is minimal and service is a la carte. The restaurant has been a fixture since 2009 and appears on the San Francisco Chronicle Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list for 2026.
Westfield Valley Fair has 7 venues in our guide, and the neighbourhood named Santa Clara has 5. Great America and the Homestead Road area each have 2. Neighbourhoods with a single venue are Rivermark, Rivermark Plaza, Mission College Blvd area, Koreatown, Mission College Blvd, and Santa Clara Koreatown.
Santa Clara has 0 Michelin-starred restaurants in our guide, and the citywide Michelin star total is 0. Both counts cover the whole city. The starred-restaurant count and the star total are the Michelin numbers for Santa Clara, and each of those numbers is 0.
La Fontana in Great America has a curated wine program and an extensive wine list, and Birk's has a curated wine program plus a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence (2026). La Fontana also serves craft cocktails, with a la carte and buffet formats.
Santa Clara has two Wine Spectator awards in our guide: a Best of Award of Excellence and an Award of Excellence. Birk's holds the Award of Excellence (2026), and its wine program is curated. The Best of Award of Excellence is the other Wine Spectator award in the city.
By Emmett Haley · Updated October 8, 2026 · Editorial standards
Santa Clara
Selected entries from the current guide for Santa Clara.
Santa Clara, United States
Birk's occupies a distinctive position on Freedom Circle in Santa Clara's corporate corridor, serving as a counterpoint to the area's casual dining defaults. The address places it squarely in Silicon Valley's business dining circuit, where the question of where to take a serious table matters as much as the food itself. It competes in a tier where setting and service carry weight alongside the menu.
Santa Clara, United States
Under Chef David Ahn, the kitchen anchors its menu in the banchan tradition, where the table's spread of side dishes signals the depth of the cooking long before the main plates arrive.
Santa Clara, United States
Din Tai Fung at Westfield Valley Fair brings the Taiwanese chain's disciplined dumpling program to Silicon Valley's most active dining corridor. The xiao long bao format that made the brand a global reference point is executed here with the same production precision found across all locations. Walk-in waits are common during peak hours; arriving early or at off-peak times is the practical strategy.
Santa Clara, United States
A Santa Clara Koreatown fixture since 2009, Kunjip draws two distinct crowds: those after the restorative pull of its oxtail bone broth seolleongtang, and those drawn to the galbijjim, a stone pot of short ribs and rice cakes in a sweet, fiery braising liquid. It is the kind of Korean kitchen where the food does the talking and the regulars know exactly what they came for.
Santa Clara, United States
Orenchi is a ramen shop in Los Altos, California, recognized by Opinionated About Dining's Cheap Eats in North America list in 2023. Operating out of a modest strip-mall address on State Street, it holds a dedicated following in the South Bay for tonkotsu-style bowls served during tight lunch and dinner windows. A dependable stop within the broader Santa Clara dining circuit.
Santa Clara, United States
AnQi Shaken & Stirred occupies a Stevens Creek Boulevard address that places it inside Silicon Valley's most contested casual-dining corridor. The bar-forward format signals an emphasis on craft drinks alongside food, a combination that has grown more common in the South Bay as the region's dining scene matures beyond its tech-campus cafeteria roots.
Santa Clara, United States
Asia Live on Stevens Creek Boulevard brings together Chinese, Southeast Asian, Indian, Korean, and Japanese food under one roof in Santa Clara. The format sits closer to a communal Asian food hall than a conventional restaurant, making it one of the Bay Area's more practical destinations for groups that can't agree on a single cuisine. It draws a steady local crowd from the surrounding tech corridor.
Santa Clara, United States
Athena Grill occupies a corner of Santa Clara's Space Park Drive corridor, where Silicon Valley's working lunch culture meets a grab-and-go rhythm that defines the area's midday dining habits. The menu leans toward familiar American grill fare served quickly to a tech-campus crowd. It is a practical neighbourhood option rather than a destination, but understanding what it offers — and what surrounds it — helps visitors plan accordingly.
Santa Clara, United States
A Santa Clara counter-service address on Tasman Drive where the menu is built around a single, disciplined premise: chicken and rice, executed with enough variation to sustain repeat visits. The format strips away the noise common to Silicon Valley's sprawling pan-Asian dining corridors, and the result reads more like a focused culinary argument than a casual lunch stop.
Santa Clara, United States
Clara's Junction sits at 2221 Tasman Drive in the heart of Silicon Valley, where the South Bay's evolving dining culture intersects with the area's dense, tech-industry-driven appetite for casual and mid-range eating. The address places it firmly within Santa Clara's commercial corridor, a stretch defined more by convenience than destination dining — which makes understanding where this spot fits in the broader scene the more useful question.
Santa Clara, United States
A long-standing neighborhood fixture on Homestead Road, Cooking Papa occupies a well-worn corner of Santa Clara's dense Asian dining corridor. The restaurant draws a local following shaped by the area's significant Chinese-American community, placing it alongside a cluster of casual, family-oriented spots where frequency of visit matters more than occasion dining. Practical, unpretentious, and rooted in the rhythms of Silicon Valley's residential dining scene.
Santa Clara, United States
Indian Sizzler occupies a prominent address on Great America Parkway in Santa Clara, placing it squarely within the South Bay's dense corridor of South Asian dining options. The sizzler format — cast-iron platters arriving tableside in a cloud of steam — anchors a menu that reads as much performance as food. It sits in a competitive local scene alongside multi-format venues like Asia Live and Korean specialists along the same stretch.
Santa Clara, United States
Jang Su Jang on El Camino Real sits inside Santa Clara's established Korean dining corridor, where strip-mall addresses and serious cooking have long coexisted without apology. The restaurant draws a loyal local crowd for whom it functions as a reliable anchor in a corridor that spans everything from quick-service Korean to multi-format Asian food halls like Asia Live.
Santa Clara, United States
Jashn brings Indian celebratory cooking to Homestead Road in Santa Clara, occupying a stretch of the South Bay where the Indian diaspora has built one of California's most concentrated and demanding audiences for subcontinental cuisine. The address positions it squarely in a neighborhood that treats Indian food not as novelty but as a standard against which restaurants are rigorously measured.
Santa Clara, United States
JOEY Valley Fair occupies the casual-upscale tier at Westfield Valley Fair, where Silicon Valley's appetite for polished comfort dining runs strong. The menu spans burgers, sushi-adjacent plates, and craft cocktails under one roof, making it a reliable option for groups navigating different tastes in the heart of Santa Clara's retail corridor.
Santa Clara, United States
La Fontana occupies a notable address on Great America Parkway in Santa Clara, positioning itself within a corridor where Silicon Valley's corporate hospitality expectations run high. The dining scene here rewards venues that can source well and cook with intention, placing ingredient provenance at the center of the experience. For the full picture of what Santa Clara's table offers, see our complete city guide.
Santa Clara, United States
The format is casual and consistent — the kind of neighborhood Italian that regulars return to not for revelation but for reliability. For Santa Clara's restaurant scene, that kind of dependable mid-tier presence fills a specific and necessary role.
Santa Clara, United States
Mapo BBQ is a good Santa Clara pick for a casual Korean BBQ meal when the table wants grilled meats plus traditional dishes like bossam, seafood jeon, jjigye, and jeongol. It is better for groups and repeat visits than for a formal date night or tasting-menu experience.
Santa Clara, United States
A practical Santa Clara pick for quick Indian street food, especially if pav bhaji, vada pav, dabeli, tawa pulao, and tea are what you want. At about $15 per person, it is strongest for casual lunches, solo meals, families, and low-pressure dinners, not special-occasion dining.
Santa Clara, United States
Pedro's Restaurant & Cantina on Freedom Circle sits within Santa Clara's tech-corridor dining belt, where Mexican cantina formats have held ground against newer fast-casual entrants. The venue draws a mixed crowd of office workers and locals looking for familiar, reliable cooking rather than culinary experimentation. For the Santa Clara dining scene, it represents the kind of neighbourhood anchor that outlasts trends by staying consistent.
Santa Clara, United States
Premier Pizza is worth choosing for casual Santa Clara pizza, especially when the order is for a group or office meal. The counter-service setup, corporate-delivery focus, vegetarian-friendly range, and gluten-free crust option make it practical rather than occasion-driven; go for convenience and value, not a long Italian dining room experience.
Santa Clara, United States
Puesto Santa Clara brings the brand's California-Mexican taco format to the heart of Silicon Valley's tech corridor on Augustine Drive. The setting suits the area's midweek lunch and casual dinner rhythms, with a menu built around handmade tortillas and market-driven fillings that have made the Puesto group a recognizable presence across Northern California.
Santa Clara, United States
Restaurant Gish occupies a strip-mall address on Homestead Road in Santa Clara, placing it squarely in the South Bay's quietly competitive dining corridor. Details on cuisine, format, and chef remain sparse in the public record, which in Silicon Valley's restaurant scene often signals a venue that builds its reputation through word of mouth rather than press visibility. Visitors planning a trip should contact the restaurant directly for current hours and booking availability.
Santa Clara, United States
Rise Woodfire Pizza & Rotisserie operates in Santa Clara's Rivermark Plaza, positioning itself within the South Bay's growing category of fire-forward casual dining. Wood-fired ovens and rotisserie cooking define the format, placing it alongside a different competitive set than the area's dominant ramen and Korean BBQ corridors. A practical choice for the Rivermark neighbourhood with a format that suits both weeknight visits and group meals.
Santa Clara
Selected entries from the current guide for Santa Clara.
No venues found.
Santa Clara
Selected entries from the current guide for Santa Clara.
Santa Clara, United States
Taplands occupies a spot on Homestead Road in Santa Clara, operating within a Silicon Valley bar scene that has grown steadily more technically ambitious in recent years. The venue sits at an address that serves both the local residential community and the broader South Bay drinking circuit, making it a reference point for those tracking craft cocktail culture outside San Francisco proper.
Santa Clara
Selected entries from the current guide for Santa Clara.
No venues found.
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